The Hidden Deficit in Your Career

January 18, 2011

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By Peter Weddle

Historically,
working Americans have relied on two kinds of knowledge in the workplace:
occupational and experiential. We went
to school and attended training programs to keep ourselves up-to-date in our
field of work, and we learned the practical lessons of how things actually got
done and done well through our day-to-day interactions on-the-job.

While
both of those kinds of knowledge were deemed important, they were not given equal
weight, either in our own minds or, in truth, in those of our employers. Book learning was obviously an important
foundation, but the superstructure of experience was the gold standard of an
employee’s value. Indeed, until
recently, if there was a choice between two candidates, one with the latest
knowledge and no experience and one with slightly (or even significantly) dated
expertise and a lot of experience, most organizations would have opted for the
person with the longer track record.

Moreover,
if you’ve been in the workforce for more than five years, you probably came to
rely on that approach to worker valuation.
Sure, you tended to your occupational knowledge, but you did so
episodically and at a relatively leisurely pace. It was an effective strategy for managing
your career because occupational knowledge expanded and was refined at a
similarly slow rate. As a result, your
mastery in your field had a long half-life.

Today,
it doesn’t.

The Shorter Half-Life of Occupational
Knowledge

The
half-life of occupational knowledge has shrunk dramatically in the last
decade. The pace of new knowledge
creation and old knowledge refinement has now accelerated in every career
field. It doesn’t matter whether you’re
a salesperson who must stay abreast of a constantly changing array of new
products or a systems analyst who must be conversant in a continuously
expanding universe of new software, half of your expertise is now obsolete
every eighteen months.

What
does that mean for you and your career? To
put it bluntly, you are going to have to acknowledge one change and make
another.

First,
you must now accept that the relative importance of expertise and experience
has shifted. Employers now view your
expertise as more critical to their success than your experience. They believe they need state-of-the-art
knowledge in order to compete in the global marketplace. Experience is still obviously helpful and
remains an important foundation for high performance. But, it is the superstructure of your knowledge
in the latest concepts, techniques, technologies and products and services that
will enable you to make a meaningful contribution on-the-job.

Second,
you can no longer afford to coast in your occupational development. There is no recess when it comes to staying
current in your field. You must now be
in school all of the time, when you’re employed and even when you’re not. In fact, if you’re in transition today, the
strongest resume is the one that indicates that you’re continuing your
knowledge acquisition even as you look for a job. That entry indicates to an employer both that
you recognize the importance of keeping your expertise current and that you
take personal responsibility for doing so.

These
two shifts have introduced a simple but powerful new key to success in the
modern American workplace. Whether
you’re in transition and looking for a new job or currently employed and
seeking to keep that job, there’s only one way to achieve your goal. You have to make sure that the knowledge you
bring to work each day is rich with the latest thinking and the newest ideas in
your field.

Peter Weddle is a recruiter, HR consultant and business CEO turned author and commentator.
Weddle is the author of over two dozen employment-related books, including the
recently released blockbuster The
Career Activist Republic and Work
Strong, Your Personal Career Fitness System, one of the most innovative
career success books in print. Both are
available at Amazon.com.